A Washington call girl is found bludgeoned to death in her Adams-Morgan apartment. As police detectives scour the apartment, they find a digital video camera nestled high among books on a shelf. Had she used the camera to video some of her clients during their sexual romps?

Then they discover a small, book-sized DVD case, full with the exception of two slots. Could they possibly get lucky? Is the murder on one of those disks?

As the investigation picks up steam, the business of Washington, D.C., rolls on. It's an election year and the sitting president, Burton Pyle, is running for a second term. His opponent, Robert Colgate, is odds-on to defeat Pyle, whose administration has been rife with corruption and scandal. And there's no love lost between Pyle and Colgate: The campaign has morphed into one of the most distasteful, nasty elections in memory.

Then, on a lovely Sunday afternoon on Washington's famed Mall, the daughter of Bob Colgate's closest confidant and advisor is kidnapped. The event rocks the city and bumps the investigation from the front page...until the detectives decide the two cases might be connected.